1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of computer systems. More specifically, the present invention relates to exclusive use display surface areas, and their applications to persistently visible display of contents, such as advertisements.
2. Background Information
With advances in microprocessor and other related technology, today""s computers are equipped with processing capabilities that were once the exclusive domain of large mainframe computers. To exploit these capabilities, today""s computers are often equipped with multi-tasking operating systems that allow multiple tasks of the same or different applications to be executed at the same time. These operating systems are also typically equipped with windowing managers to manage the concurrent display of the execution results of the various tasks or applications through windowing, within the constraint of the available display surface of a display device. That is, the execution results of the various tasks/applications are rendered in corresponding display windows (hereinafter, simply windows), and these windows share the display surface. This employment of windows along with the use of iconic representations for various programs and xe2x80x9cobjectsxe2x80x9d is also often referred to as the desktop metaphor, with the shared display surface area being referred to as the desktop area.
Whether the contents rendered in the various windows are actually visible to a user depend on the relatively placement of the windows within the available display surface. Except for the top window (such as the xe2x80x9cin focusxe2x80x9d window or another window xe2x80x9criggedxe2x80x9d to be xe2x80x9calways on topxe2x80x9d) or windows that do not overlap with other windows (such as windows placed in a tile arrangement), contents of the underlying windows disposed in the overlapping portions are considered obstructed, and generally invisible, unless the top and other intermediate windows are considered xe2x80x9ctransparentxe2x80x9d. Contents disposed in the obstructed portions of these underlying windows become visible only when the window manager surfaces the window as the top window, typically responsive to a user request.
Many applications, such as Internet advertising, desire to have at least some of their rendered contents (in the case of Internet advertising, the advertisements themselves) persistently visible to the user. However, xe2x80x9criggingxe2x80x9d the browser window to be xe2x80x9calways on topxe2x80x9d is not necessarily a viable option. Furthermore, in the case of Internet advertisement, even if xe2x80x9criggingxe2x80x9d the browser window as xe2x80x9calways on topxe2x80x9d is a viable option, it still would not fully satisfy its persistent visibility desire. The reason is because most Internet advertisements are rendered in the form of banners, typically disposed at least at the top and at the bottom of a page. The banner advertisement placed at the bottom of a page is typically not visible when the page is first displayed, as the page is typically larger than the browser window. Similarly, the banner advertisement placed at the top of the page becomes invisible as the page is scrolled downward.
Thus, an improved approach to display management that better addresses the persistent visibility requirements of applications, in particular, the persistent visibility requirements of Internet advertising is desired.
In a computer system having a display device with a display surface, a portion of the display surface is reserved for an exclusive use, allowing contents rendered in the reserve area to be persistently visible. In one embodiment, the reservation is accomplished through reducing the width and height of a shared portion of the display surface managed by a window manager, corresponding to a graphics resolution. In one embodiment, the exclusive use is to render advertisements in the reserved portion by an advertising rendering program. The advertisements are HTML pages received from an advertisement web server through the Internet. The HTML pages are rendered in the reserved portion through a direct draw component. The direct draw component is provided with the unreduced width and height as the width and height of the surface area to support direct drawing of graphical displays. A cursor control device driver also supports monitoring of movements of a cursor control device and of occurrences of cursor events. The cursor control device driver is likewise provided with the unreduced width and height as the width and height of the surface area to monitor for cursor movements and events. In other embodiments, multiple portions of the display surface are reserved for advertising and/or other exclusive uses.